She looked down at herself and laughed again. Here she was, who had wept and worried at the mere idea of a step-mother, and had even been glad that Miss Ruth was rather cool to Daddy—here she was, actually scheming to get a step-mother, which step-mother was to be that same Miss Ruth!
She went up to the mirror and looked into it. “Phœbe!” she whispered. “Oh, you’re such a funny girl!”
She sobered. Her glance had caught her mother’s photograph. She took it up, holding it in both hands, close, and speaking to it as if to the living. “Oh, you won’t mind?” she faltered. “Oh, Mother, try to tell me that you won’t mind!”
She held the photograph against her. Was she being faithless to her own mother, in taking a new one? She turned to an open window, and looked up.
Somewhere in the vast sky was her dear one, more beautiful now, and always to be beautiful and young. Uncle John said this was true of all who died. And even though Uncle John did not like her mother he could not say that she fared any differently than all the others who went away. Out of the great blue was Mother looking down now upon her little girl? And how? Happily? Or in sorrow?
Phœbe looked at the picture again. There was a tender smile on the lovely face. The eyes looked full into her daughter’s.
“Oh, I know you don’t mind!” cried Phœbe. “You don’t mind!” She knelt at the open window. Great white clouds lay against the blue. Phœbe understood that her mother was beyond them—farther. She shut her eyes, praying.
“Oh, Mother, thank you!” she whispered. “It isn’t about Daddy you mind—I know that. But about me—you believe I won’t love you any less, ever. Oh, Mother, you’ll see I won’t forget you even for Miss Ruth. Don’t let it hurt, will you? Don’t be a weeny speck jealous. Oh, precious Mother!”
She kissed the picture, and got up, strangely comforted. There was some pink tissue-paper in the bottom drawer of the dresser. She took it out and carefully wrapped the photograph. Then she opened the clothes-closet and found the suit-case.
The lining of the cover was loose at one corner, and two or three little things were under there, hidden! A valentine from a boy! Some hair-pins, picked up now and then, and useful, on occasions, for trial attempts at putting up her hair. And there was a picture post-card. A girl had given it to her—one of Miss Simpson’s girls. Phœbe did not quite understand the meaning of the picture on that card. But from the look in the girl’s eyes, from the curious expression of her mouth, Phœbe had sensed that the post-card was not nice.